by Brian Bowyer
Then Myla followed him to Paracosmos in Brooklyn. It took them about an hour to get there. The gallery was in a one-story brick building. They parked in front of the building and went inside.
He led her to a hallway in the back. She followed him down the hallway to a door marked STORAGE. He took a cluster of keys from his pocket, found the correct one, and unlocked the door. Then he opened the door and turned on a light.
They stepped into a room cluttered with boxes and mounted canvases covered by drop cloths. He led her to one of the canvases leaning against a wall and removed its cloth.
“Blood Moon Rising,” Archibald said. “By Steven Alenzo.”
“Oh wow,” Myla said. “That is a stunning piece of work.”
The background was a starry sky, and superimposed over it was the transparent face of a beautiful young girl. She appeared to be about five or six years old. She had long red hair and bright green eyes. Her eyes were turned upward, toward a wash of light that rained down upon her from beyond the top of the canvas. The yellow light looked warm and inviting, but the expression on the little girl’s face and in her eyes conveyed absolute sorrow. In the foreground, as the focus of the painting, a red moon rose over an ocean. Alenzo’s signature was in the bottom-left corner of the canvas. The artist had signed his name in the same shade of red as the blood moon rising over the ocean—which was a darker red than the hair of the little girl whose sad, transparent face was superimposed over the stars in the background.
“That’s the saddest little girl I’ve ever seen,” Myla said. “She looks to be about the same age that Miriam was when she died.”
“Your daughter was six, right?”
Myla nodded. “Yes. And this painting is definitely haunted. The little girl is whispering in my head as we speak.”
“What’s she saying?”
“I don’t know. I can’t make her words out. Just murmurs and faint susurrations. And a melody! Yes! Now she’s humming a soft melody, like a lullaby. You can’t hear that?”
“No. Like I said: the painting has never communicated to me, but it spooked so many customers that we deemed it inappropriate for public viewing. That is why we keep it back here in storage.”
“I wonder who this little girl is,” Myla said. “One of his victims?”
Archibald nodded. “Evidently. It’s an acrylic painting, of course, but there’s also two types of human blood mixed in with the red acrylic.”
“Human blood?” She took a step back from the canvas and turned to face him. “How do you know?”
“Before we yanked it from public view, several customers claimed that the little girl in the painting told them that the artist used her blood to paint the moon.”
“I still can’t make out what she’s saying.” Myla cocked her head. “She’s still whispering, though. So anyway, what did you do? Have someone pull samples from the canvas for testing?”
“Yes. Two different blood types came back. One was found in the paint used for the moon. The other was found in the paint used for the signature.”
She put a hand on her hip. “Let me guess: Steven Alenzo’s blood type matches the signature?”
“Correct. Which means, of course, that unless all those customers were lying, the blood in the paint used for the moon came from the little girl’s body.”
She took a step closer to the canvas. “How much do you want for this?”
“You can just have it,” Archibald said. “The painting doesn’t speak to me, but lately I’ve been getting terrible headaches.”
“Thank you. You’re very generous. And speaking of headaches: I need to get home and take my medication. I’ll call you sometime.”
He nodded. “Please do. It was nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
She took Blood Moon Rising back to her apartment in Manhattan.
• • •
Myla’s phone rang and woke her from a nightmare about Steven Alenzo. In her dream, the fugitive artist had been cutting her flesh with a straight razor and a carving knife. Also in her dream, he had looked about the same as the last time she had seen him on the news probably ten years ago. For once, she was glad she had forgotten to turn down her cellphone’s ringtone volume before falling asleep.
Her phone was on the nightstand by her bed. She picked it up and cringed when she saw who was calling her. She thought about not answering, but decided to accept the call. She took a deep breath and then pressed the TALK button. “Hello?”
“Hi, Myla! I hope I didn’t wake you.” Her sister was trying to make her voice sound cheerful.
“Don’t worry about it. But I do have a headache, so let’s keep this brief.”
“Ah. Still the resentment, I see. Even after all this time. I’m still your sister, Myla. You need to get over it.”
I will never get over what you did to me, Myla thought. I will never get over what both of you did to me.
“What do you want, Marlow?”
“Nick left a couple of photo albums in the attic at your house. Old photographs from his side of the family. He’d like to get them back.”
“Okay. I’ll look for them later. When I feel better. If I find them, I’ll send them to you.”
“We’re not doing anything today. I can come over by myself and help you look for them. Would that be okay?”
The last thing Myla wanted was to see Marlow. A year had passed since she and Nick revealed their affair, but that was a wound that would always be raw. “No. Listen, I already told you that I don’t feel good. I have to go.”
“But—”
Myla stopped the call and tossed her phone onto Nick’s old side of the bed. Her head wasn’t hurting. That had been a lie. It had also been a lie when she told Archibald that her head was hurting last night. But the little girl’s voice in her head was pretty much ceaseless. And some of her words were starting to come through clearly now, too. It was like there were no other voices in the world anymore. There was only the little girl’s voice, speaking to her. Ever since last night, Myla’s entire existence seemed to be quickly becoming only the little girl’s voice in her mind. Blood Moon Rising was hanging on the wall above her headboard, but she didn’t need to be looking at the painting to hear the little girl’s voice.
Myla closed her eyes. She didn’t think she would go back to sleep, but she did. She dreamed about Steven Alenzo making her bleed.
• • •
The next day, while leaving for work on Monday morning, Myla’s head started hurting as soon as she left her apartment. By the time she arrived at the office, her pain was excruciating.
“How did it go with Archibald?” Katelyn said.
Myla shrugged. “Not bad, I suppose. But he’s definitely not my type.”
Katelyn gave her a look of concern. “Are you okay? My god, Myla, you look terrible.”
Myla pressed a hand to her forehead. “Bad migraine. I think I should go back home. Actually, I think I should just take some time off work for a while.”
Katelyn nodded. “I agree. I’ve been telling you that for a year now. Take a few weeks and put yourself back together. Hell, take a few months, if you need to. It’s not like you can’t afford it.”
“I’ll call you soon,” Myla said.
She left. By the time she got back to her apartment, the headache had gone away completely.
• • •
One week later. Four a.m. Awake on her sofa.
The little girl was talking and Myla’s head wasn’t hurting at all. She had moved the painting from her bedroom into the living room and it was now hanging on the wall above her television. The TV was on, but she wasn’t watching it. The volume was turned all the way down. She had learned fairly quickly that there was a direct correlation between the pain in her head and her proximity to Blood Moon Rising. As long as she stayed close to the painting, her head remained free of pain. If she didn’t stay close to the painting, the pain returned and became increasingly worse the farther she withdrew.
>
She was almost asleep when the little girl said something that caused Myla’s eyelids to snap open. “Sorry,” Myla said. “I was almost asleep. Could you repeat that, please?”
I said the bad man has another little girl.
“Who? Steven Alenzo?”
Yes. The bad man. The man who used my blood to paint the moon. He has another little girl now, and he’s taking her to the same place he took me.
“How do you know this?”
Because sometimes I can see out of the bad man’s eyes. Sometimes I can see what the bad man sees. He’s taking her to the place where the big moose lives.
“The big moose?”
Yes. The big moose lives on the side of the road.
“Does the big moose live in New York?”
I don’t know. It was really far away in a car. It’s a place called Upstate. That’s what the bad man kept telling me. He kept saying that he was taking me to a place called Upstate.
Upstate, Myla knew, was basically what most people called the entire state of New York north of New York City. The girl in the painting could have been (unknowingly) referring to Albany, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, or any one of a thousand other places, but as soon as she had mentioned a big moose that lives on the side of a road, Myla had a suspicion that she knew exactly where the little girl was talking about.
As a child growing up in Manhattan, Myla’s parents had often driven her through a lot of rural areas in the state of New York’s northern regions during vacations and weekend getaways, and an image that remained lodged in her memory even after all these years was the statue of a giant moose on the side of a road up in the Catskill Mountains, about a hundred miles north of New York City. The statue had served as a signpost for a large campgrounds area called Moose Mountain Cabins. Myla’s parents had rented cabins there a few times during her childhood, and she had contemplated going back there by herself and renting a cabin sometime now that she was an adult.
“Moose Mountain Cabins,” Myla said. “Is that where the bad man took you?”
Yes. He took me to a cabin where the moose lives.
“And now he’s taking another girl to a cabin where the moose lives?”
Yes. He wants to use her blood to make another painting. And then he wants to kill her, just like he killed me.
• • •
While Myla slept, she struggled through a series of dreams consisting of seemingly disassociated images that melded into one another with no logical narrative flow whatsoever.
Wind-whipped rain. Groves of leafless trees. Lightning and thunder.
Her lost daughter, Miriam, lying with sallow skin and hollow cheeks against hospital sheets, dying of bone cancer.
Her sister and her ex-husband (her sister’s husband, now) making love atop a grand piano in a ballroom, while a corpse conducted an orchestra of skeletons playing a symphony on a stage.
Frequently she was a passenger in a car driven by Steven Alenzo, and he referred to her as Scarlett, as if that were her name. At other times, he was not simply a part of the dream, but was instead the viewpoint through which the dream was observed, as if Myla were actually looking out at the world through Steven Alenzo’s eyes—and that was how she learned that Scarlett was the name of the little girl whose face was in the painting. The name of the little girl whose blood he had used to paint the moon in Blood Moon Rising was Scarlett.
• • •
Myla woke up and decided that she needed to kill Steven Alenzo. She didn’t know if she had come to that decision on her own, or if Scarlett had helped her reach it in her sleep. Either way, it was something that needed to be done. Maybe then Scarlett’s soul would be released from Blood Moon Rising, and perhaps Myla would then be free of the control the painting was holding her under.
But first she had to find him, which was something the authorities had been unable to do for the past ten years. The authorities, however, didn’t know where to look for him.
Myla did.
• • •
She needed to leave the apartment to make a few purchases. Because she couldn’t get too far away from the painting without being clobbered by headaches, Myla took it off her wall and put it in the trunk of her car. Then she drove to a sporting-goods store on Fifth Avenue.
Leaving Blood Moon Rising in the trunk, she went inside. She was able to do her shopping without experiencing any head pain.
• • •
Is that a gun?
Myla was sitting on her sofa in the living room, holding a crossbow. The rest of her purchases from the sporting-goods store were spread out on the coffee table. The painting was once again hanging on the wall above the television. Scarlett’s eyes in Blood Moon Rising were, as always, looking up at the light shining down upon her face from beyond the top of the canvas, but the little girl could evidently still see her nevertheless.
“No,” Myla said. “I have a gun, but it’s in my bedroom. This is a crossbow.”
What’s a crossbow?
“A weapon that shoots arrows.”
Like what Cupid uses?
Myla smiled. “Something like that.”
Do you know how to shoot it?
“Oh yes. I used to win trophies for archery when I was a little girl.”
What’s archery?
“Shooting arrows with a bow, basically. Before that, I took ballet lessons at Miss Llewellyn’s, on the Upper West Side.”
I know what ballet is. I like ballet.
“Me too. Anyway, Miss Llewellyn used to watch my body carefully, to see if I had a future in ballet. Rumor had it that Miss Llewellyn was a fortune teller. Supposedly she had gypsy blood running through her veins. People said that she could read a girl’s destiny in the way she moved her limbs and her body. One day she tapped me on the shoulder and told me that I was not a dancer. She told me that I was an archer, instead. And that was all it took for me. I went straight home and told my parents that I wanted to switch from ballet to archery.”
How old were you?
“Nine, I think. Maybe ten. Something like that.”
Oh.
“So how old were you, Scarlett? How old were you when you died?”
Six.
“I had a daughter. Her name was Miriam. She was six years old when she died.”
Did a bad man kill her, too?
“No. Bone cancer killed Miriam.”
What’s bone cancer?
“A terrible illness.”
Illness?
“A disease.”
What’s a disease?
“A really bad sickness.”
Oh. So Miriam got sick, and then she died?
“Yes.”
That’s sad.
Myla set the crossbow down on the coffee table amongst her other purchases: binoculars; camouflage clothes; plenty of extra twenty-inch broadhead arrows; a hunting knife; a handheld directional compass with a lanyard to wear around her neck. “If I take you to where the moose lives, will you be able to help me find Steven Alenzo?”
Yes. If you get me close to the bad man, I can help you find him.
Myla nodded. “Okay then. Looks like you and I are headed to the Catskill Mountains.”
Yay! If you can kill the bad man, maybe I can finally leave this stupid moon!
“That’s the plan.”
And maybe we can save the little girl, too!
“I suppose we’ll see.”
Myla packed her stuff into an extra-long duffel bag. Then she put Blood Moon Rising in the trunk of her car and hit the road.
• • •
“Is that it?” Myla said, slowing the car as she approached the statue that served as a signpost for Moose Mountain Cabins. She had taken the painting from the trunk and put it on the seat behind her a few miles back.
Yes! That’s it! That’s the big moose that lives on the side of the road!
There were a few lay-bys on the road past the signpost. Myla parked in one of those and turned off the engine. She was dressed in t
he camouflage clothes and wearing gloves. Her duffel bag was on the passenger’s seat beside her.
She had grabbed her gun before leaving the apartment. She picked it up off the floorboard beneath the driver’s seat and looked at it.
The gun—a Glock 26 9mm—was loaded with ten rounds in the clip and one in the chamber. It was a small, easy-to-conceal gun that packed a powerful punch. She had paid cash for it in the back room of a pawn shop not long after Nick left her. Unless she got caught holding it, the gun could not be traced back to her. According to the man who had sold it to her, the gun wasn’t registered to anyone.
Her camouflage pants had deep side pockets. She put the gun in the pocket on her right side with plenty of room to spare.
You have to hurry! You have to kill the bad man before he kills the little girl!
“Do you know which cabin he’s in?”
He’s not in the cabin right now! He’s walking around in the woods! He’s going to use her blood to make a painting when he gets back to the cabin!
Myla opened her duffel bag. A strap was attached to the binoculars. She put the strap around her neck. She also put the lanyard attached to the compass around her neck. She put the hunting knife and a few spare arrows in her pocket on the left side of her camouflage pants. Then she grabbed the crossbow and got out of the car.
The day was young. The sky was gray. The temperature was mild. Woods of the Catskill Mountains lined both sides of the road. There were no cars going by in either direction.
Holding the crossbow in her right hand, Myla opened the rear door on the driver’s side and grabbed Blood Moon Rising with her left. She took the painting out of the car and used a knee to close the door. It was a fairly large canvas, measuring two feet by three, but she could nevertheless carry it under her left arm with ease. “Which way?”
Turn around.
Myla did. She looked down at her compass. It was pointing north. “This way?”
Yes. There’s water that way. His cabin is farther than the water.
Myla headed north through the woods. The part through which she walked was not very dense. Soon she came to a dirt road that went east and west with nice-looking rental cabins lined up on the other side of it.